Cornflower Books

Tbr patchwork

    Some more good things from the tbr piles:

The Trouble With Alice by Olivia Glazebrook - an accident, an estrangement, a widening gap between two previously happy people; "elegant lyricism, poignancy and humour, [the book] unwinds the conventions of a love story".

The Rain Tree by Mirabel Osler - this memoir is "a beautifully written celebration of a life well lived" by the well known author of A Gentle Plea for Chaos (which is about to be re-issued). "Mirabel Osler's meditation on the profound pleasures of writing, gardens, travel and food is both graceful and deeply affecting."

The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield - this novel (out in July) features a tomboy called Swan Lake, "quick, formidable and as engaging as Scout Finch". Her preacher father is ousted from his ministry, and the family must move in with their unruly Arkansas relatives, but then Swan encounters their neighbour ...

But I Told You Last Year That I Loved You by Sue Hepworth - "a portrait of a mature marriage at a crossroads - intimate, honest and tender", this book (great title!) is set in the Derbyshire Peak District and will be out in June. Sue's website is here.

Magus of Stonewylde by Kit Berry - a YA novel set in deepest Dorset, "a hidden place of secrets, passion and fatal conflict". Ailing Sylvie seeks healing in the tranquil community of Stonewylde, but it's not all idyllic ... "magic, mystery, love" and more.

Summer at Willow Lake by Susan Wiggs - "combining hazy nostalgic summers with a hot romance", this sounds like the perfect beach read! Fleeing a broken engagement, Olivia Bellamy goes to her grandparents' resort in the Catskills; there she'll uncover family secrets and meet again Connor Davis, the first love she never forgot...

One book, two book, three book, four ...

   

     Ever the trend-setter, Simon T. has quite a few of us following where he leads with his One book, two book .... post, so here's my list, beginning with -

The book I'm currently reading: Just begun, A Book for All and None by Clare Morgan. I'm only a few pages in, but here's the blurb: "Raymond is a brilliant Oxford don and Nietzsche expert who discovers love and life when he meets Beatrice, a much younger academic who is researching Virginia Woolf. As their love affair develops and they delve deeper into the lives of their subjects ... other stories, connections and secrets from the past come to life: of Woolf, of Lou von Salomé and Nietzsche, and of Raymond's own family ... a tale of mystery and suspense, unravelling the strands of a past that shatters our perceptions of the figures at the heart of the story." Sounds intriguing, doesn't it?

 

The last book I finished: A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig & Other Essays by Charles Lamb. Another of the Penguin Great Food series, I won't pre-empt a proper post on it, but I will say that it was very enjoyable.

 

The next book I want to read: I'm spoiled for choice as I have so many good books waiting - glance over at the 'Arrivals' list on the right and you'll see some of them. I already know what I have to read next, and that is five novels which should arrive on Monday or Tuesday and have to be reviewed for a tight deadline, so stay tuned for them ...

The last book I bought: The absolutely lovely Writers' Houses of which I gave a glimpse the other day.

 

The last book I was given: When Simon was up here a few weeks ago he very kindly brought me a copy of William by E.H. Young, which I have yet to read but which I know was much enjoyed by fellow bloggers recently.

 

Do follow suit and post your 'past, present and future' list on your own blog or here in the coments if you wish.

Pet peeves

    I was interested to read Thomas's recent post about annoying aspects of a novel. As you'll see if you pop over there, some of the irritations for Thomas were errors of fact or degree, and many were things which proper research could have corrected, so I wondered how forgiving, as readers, you tend to be: do factual errors bother you, are you put off by certain stylistic devices, and so on? These annoyances can act like potholes in what should be a smooth road surface - uncomfortable and inconvenient at best, enough to through you quite off course (and make you put down the book) at worst.

    A lot of us don't care for present tense narratives (and despite endless commentary to this effect, writers don't seem to have got the message that we find them off-putting, and the book has to work all the harder to win us over), and a particular peeve of mine is when a middle-aged character who ought to have some sense behaves immaturely in order to establish their 'cool' credentials. As to facts, yes, I like things to be accurate where it's reasonable to expect it, and sloppy writing doesn't go down well with me, either. How about you?

Books and plants and cakes

    When the CBG read Sue Gee's The Mysteries of Glass (the post on it is here), some of us wondered what the plant referred to in the book as "prayermint" actually was. I know I wasn't alone in googling the name and looking it up in botanical and horticultural books, but I drew a blank. Well now the mystery has been solved: I heard today from the author herself that it's not a real plant at all, she made it up!

                                                    ~~~~~

    You may have seen this 'tbr' post about Cathy Woodman's The Sweetest Thing. As the novel's heroine sets up a cake-baking business, the publishers have announced a 'bake-off' competition to mark the book's launch - full details here.

Worlds apart

 

    I've read two of the four books Peirene Press have published to date (their fifth is due out soon) and I must congratulate Meike and her team on the unusual and thought-provoking European literature they are bringing to the English-speaking market. First was Véronique Olmi's Beside the Sea, a brave choice to begin with (post on it here), and now, translated from the German by Anthea Bell, Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki.

    "This novella deals with the weighty subjects of marriage and death in an impressively light manner. Shifting realities evolve with a beautiful sense of irony and wit. It is a tone that allows us to reflect, without judgment, on misunderstandings, contradictory perceptions and the transience of life."

    That introductory note puts it very well because this is a book of contrasts, and one which is all about differing interpretations. If that sounds obscure, then here's the gist: Chinese scholar Hinrich Schepp begins another day by finding his wife Doro already at her desk in their apartment, editing his papers as usual. Bending down to kiss her good morning, Hinrich discovers that she is, in fact, dead. Shocked into disbelief and near-immobility, he focuses on the only thing that for him, in that moment, is real and true, namely the papers Doro has been working on, but expecting to see her notes on one of his articles, he finds instead that it's a draft of a novel he once wrote she has been looking at, and her annotations on the text are in fact a stinging, unsparing commentary on their own marriage.

    "That morning, Schepp reluctantly turned back into what he had been all his life, a patient interpreter of primary sources." As he remembers his many years with Doro - the marriage he thought had been a happy one - and reads of the surprising plans she was about to put into action, he tries to make sense of all he's known and assumed was the truth, but his version is very different from the one Doro has revealed on paper.

    This is a clever book, short and intense, shifting in mood and tone, showing us two halves of a whole - and in more ways than one, as you'll see if you read it. It's a shared life sharply bisected, and a hard look at how we both see and delude ourselves to suit the reality we want to believe in.

A glimpse of writers' houses

    When I saw the book Writers' Houses mentioned on Eggs on the Roof the other day - and thanks to Oxslip for recommending that lovely site in the first place - I bought a copy sharpish (though I see there are fewer available now and prices are high). It's the sort of book I can't resist, full of fabulous photographs of interiors, and some exteriors, too, rooms full of sunshine or pools of lamplight, books everywhere, desks and treasured possessions, all as though the writers themselves are about to step into the picture at any moment.

    There is Karen Blixen's Danish family home, full of the flowers she loved to arrange, Lawrence Durrell's French house, familiar from some of his writings, Vita Sackville-West's Sissinghurst, Virginia Woolf's Monk's House, and many more, all discovered by author Francesca Premoli-Droulers and photographer Erica Lennard as they travelled across Europe and the United States in search of the 'spirit of place' or genius loci which influenced those whose houses they visited.

    If you click on the picture to enlarge it you'll see, from the top row, left to right:

- the work table in the glassed-in veranda in his house in Sommières near Nîmes at which Lawrence Durrell would make an early start each day

- Vita Sackville-West's writing room cum library in the tower at Sissinghurst

- the "lighthouse", or study of Jean Giono in Manosque, Provence

- the work shed at the Boat House, Laugharne, home to Dylan Thomas

- Karen Blixen's desk at Rungstedlund in Denmark, with the typewriter she brought back from Africa

- Mark Twain's conservatory in Hartford, Connecticut

- the green sitting-room at Virginia Woolf's Monk's House in Rodmell, Suffolk, its table and chairs decorated by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant

- W.B. Yeats's Thoor Ballylee in Galway, Ireland

- the drawing-room at Marbacka, an estate in western Sweden which was home to Selma Lagerlöf.

Just out

 

      I got so far ahead of myself with The Hunting Ground, Cliff McNish's very chilling ghost story for older children, that I wrote about it ages before publication - the post is here - so it's only fair to come back to it today and let you know that the book is now out. Please do heed my warning at the beginning of that post and my suggestion at the end!

One plus one

 

    Catherine Hall's new novel The Proof of Love has not one but two epigraphs, and as they relate so well to the story they preface, I'll quote them both. First is Virginia Woolf, from the essay Lewis Carroll:

"To become a child is to be very literal; to find everything so strange that nothing is surprising; to be heartless, to be ruthless, yet to be so passionate that a snub or a shadow drapes the world in gloom."

    Then Bertrand Russell, from The Study of Mathematics:

"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show."

    The book is set in the long, hot summer of 1976 in a remote farm in the Lake District fells. Spencer Little is a postgraduate student at Cambridge, a mathematician of great promise, but he's left college for the long vacation, intent on finding a job on a farm. Taken in by the uncommunicative Dodds family at Mirethwaite, he gets board and lodging in a shepherd's hut on the fell in return for his labour, and he makes a friend of the Dodds' young daughter, Alice, a bright ten-year-old used to making do with her own company and that of her dog. When Spencer saves Alice from a mountain fire it seems that the family and the small local community have accepted him and at last made him welcome, but as he settles into his adoptive home, the secrets he has been keeping will not remain hidden for long.

    The unlikely relationship between the shy, private Spencer - his mind still on the mathematical proofs he clings to as "pure, uncontaminated and permanent" - and the enthusiastic, trusting, little girl is a very believable and touching one. Life isn't easy for either of them, and while open, friendly Alice helps Spencer settle in at Mirethwaite, so he gives her time and interest and attention, something she's been short of from the grown-ups around her. The friendship opens up something in each of them, and this new brightness looks set fair to last, as does the heat that summer, but of course the weather has to break.

    To find out what happens to Spencer and Alice you'll have to read the book, which as a whole is intense, atmospheric, muted and with a heavy stillness. To use a musical analogy, it's like a single sustained note on a stringed instrument: emotive, evenly pitched, with subtle but telling differences in vibration. Some readers may find it too 'quiet' for their taste and their reaction might be an underwhelmed 'is that it?', but I found this deliberately limited range very appealing - it's contained, introspective, concentrated, and for me it worked very well.

Tbr: The Alchemist and the Angel

 

    - The Alchemist and the Angel by Joanne Owen.

    - A gothic tale of magic and madness, and the quest for eternal life.

    - Set in 16th. century Prague and Vienna, this is the tale of Jan, an alchemist's apprentice, whose help is enlisted by his scientist uncle Gustav in creating a life-generating serum. To test the serum, they must follow a set of ancient instructions and play a dangerous game of bringing the inanimate to life, but when Gustav dies suddenly, it is up to Jan to carry on his life's work. Then he meets Zuzana, a girl with secrets of her own ...

    - The legends, spells and alchemy used in this book were found in 16th. century documents, and the story is inspired by Emperor Rudolf II and his Cabinet of Curiosities (see also this edition of In Our Time).

Tbr: The Maid

 

    - The Maid by Kimberly Cutter.

    - "The girl who led an army. The peasant who crowned a king. The maid who became a legend."

    - The Hundred Years War; the English are besieging the French city of Orléans, the uncrowned Charles VII cannot and will not rally his army to stop the English destruction, but a twelve-year-old peasant girl hears a voice and believes she has been chosen by God to save France.

    - From the reviews: "Pacy enough to outstrip any cliché about Saint Joan, yet also a tender portrait of a young girl drawn into a hateful destiny." "Searingly unsentimental but emotionally powerful, this is a groundbreaking and ultimately beautiful book."

    - You can see a trailer for the book here.

Sugar and spice

    

    "Unerringly she turns corners, ducks through alleyways, crosses busy streets with barely a glance, like a cat with an idea glowing in its catty brain."

    That's Sugar, the character at the heart of Michel Faber's immense and compelling novel The Crimson Petal and the White, clever, shrewd, a match for any man no matter how extensive his education or high his social standing, her cat-like stealth and cunning insinuating her into a position of influence as the mistress and confidante of a rich man. I can't tell you much about Sugar without giving away more than I should, but suffice to say she's a prostitute in Victorian London, a young woman much in demand, but one whose brain is a far greater asset then her body. When she meets William Rackham, heir to a considerable perfume and soap manufacturing business, her gifts of one sort or another come fully into play.

    For an exceptionally long book this is a remarkably quick read, and that's down to the tide-like pull of the story. The narrative voice is very intimate and personal - sometimes it's a whisper in the reader's ear, elsewhere more like a barker's cry - but it has you from first page to last. A morality tale, or a cautionary one, and full of false trails and blind alleys, it's hard to pinpoint exactly what makes it work so well. There's the sensational aspect (the narrator explicitly promises 'more sex soon', should anyone's appetite for graphic scenes be yet unsated), but that in itself is nothing like enough to carry the book; there's the Dickensian scale, though not, I think, the style (if you want a true pastiche of a Victorian novel, better read D.J. Taylor's Kept - more on it here); there's the ebb and flow I mentioned, but while Faber is adept at writing his characters into corners, he's not as good at getting them out again, and some momentum is lost due to loose ends or convenient plot twists, but perhaps he's leaving scope for a sequel (though there are already related stories).

    One reviewer noted that "Faber writes some of the most ravishingly beautiful prose of any young writer", but I wouldn't call it beautiful, finding it, rather, stylishly efficient at doing its job. If you come away from it feeling besmirched with grime and smuts, in need of some of Rackham's lavender soap to wash your hands, that's down to the historically accurate and remarkably vivid depiction of the seamier side of London life in the mid-1870s. It's raw and unprettified: a clinical analysis of the transactions of the flesh, and of the poverty and deprivation of the underclass, set against the wealth, privilege and often compromised mores which formed the 'respectable' face of society. As such it's both powerful and memorable, so my thanks to all those who urged me to read it as they were right when they said it couldn't be put down, and I can see why it would be worth revisiting, too.